


Not even in Hell

by Hereticality



Category: The Three Musketeers (2011)
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Introspection, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-03
Updated: 2013-11-03
Packaged: 2017-12-31 10:00:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1030355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hereticality/pseuds/Hereticality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Captain is injured in a fight. The Cardinal cares a bit too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not even in Hell

Cardinal Richelieu struts through the palace's checkered corridors, steps echoing and hands tightly clasped under his red cloak.

 _The Baron_ , he keeps hearing around every corner, _have you heard of the Baron?_

The Cardinal hasn't heard of him, but for the moment he cares next to nothing. It's a vague relief that the voices are not _'have you heard of Count Rochefort?'_ instead.

At his side a young man, a Guard clothed of not even two months, keeps his step with undignified difficulty; fortunately for him, in blissful silence. Something weights at the pit of his stomach, and the cold kiss of steel against the skin of his right forearm is the only thing keeping it at bay.

During the course of the past three months, hidden beneath a layer of artful, arranged inaccuracy, a series of assassination attempts has taken place.

He's been barely grazed by most of them, luck and experience aiding him in displeasingly equal parts. The cup of wine slightly off in colour, the prepared meats his cats wouldn't dare to steal, the odd glance by a man of his own Guard that made his skin crawl. And again, Rochefort tensing up suddenly, suggesting they change streets, rooms, time of meeting. Suggesting he sleeps in full armour when he's alone.

He hadn't been able to conceal an impatient sigh at that: as if he could allow it to show, how having his life at stake is getting to him, how his nerves are frying and his appetite waning over it. That, full armour or not, he can barely sleep with Rochefort curled tightly around him like a human shield, let alone on his own. The situation is dire enough to make him wish Milady hadn't left so early in the year; calling her back from England would take time and risks he's not sure he has the time to face.

Always at the hands of paid goons who don't know who paid them no matter how harshly they're tortured, the attempts have a sort of exasperating, naive cleverness to them, constructed like tortuous streams running uphill, making it hard to find the source.

Rochefort, had been reported, had tried to face the issue head on that same morning, discreetly stalking a suspect down an alley. He had been missing until sundown.

Then they had found him.

The men guarding the door part for him, and he opens it himself, softly. He wishes he could slam it open. He wishes he could burn the rules and talk to the physician himself, instead of having the unnamed young Guard be news-bearer, summoning him to Rochefort's bedside like his word held God's command.

The unnamed guard had counted on his fingers. _Injuries from impact with a blunt object. Countless flesh wounds. Cracked ribs. Thrown from a window and left for dead, probably._

Richelieu had made no comment, no sound aside from a pensive hum; he hadn't asked if Rochefort will live.

 _If the fever breaks and he's awake by morning, there's a hope,_ the youth had continued, unasked.

He had spent a moment wondering if his face had become so open that even a clueless youth could pick up on his thoughts. The dregs of such question had followed him to the room, then dissolved at the door, like banished spirits.

"Leave us," he dismisses, first thing before looking around. The Guard retreats out of his field of view, and he forgets about him the second his eyes fall on the supine figure of his Captain.

He lies on white sheets, near the far wall, bandaged in linen stained a dull, hateful red. He nears the bed in measured steps, pushing all thoughts of last _Penance_ at the back of his mind. For a moment, he's unable to focus on his face, and he sees only the open nightshirt, the shadow of the window stretched in dark lines over his bruised skin. He looks smaller, so drowned in white, the soft mattress sinking with the print of his unmoving body; it doesn't suit him.

Staring at the starched line of the sheet covering him, Richelieu imagines having no witnesses, no judging eyes; he imagines screaming and shaking him to wake him up. He grazes a hand instead, resting lifeless close to the edge at Rochefort's side, with the tips of his ungloved fingers; it's so cold it makes him shiver.

He finally brings his eyes up. Rochefort's face is unfamiliar somehow, his eyes closed and his scar in full view, bare and open, unpleasant like a well-kept secret indiscreetly uncovered. He feels a stab of jealousy for those who have seen it, for the pillows nesting his untied hair, a black halo sprawled around his head. A bitter smile tugs at Richelieu's face, almost painful. _Such a saint you'd make, my friend._ Rochefort is so pale, with dark shadows under his eyes and bluish, cracked lips, he looks already dead, ready to ascend.

He ignores the wooden chair to sit on the bed. It dips under his weight, and the motion minutely jostles his Captain's listless form; the hand he touched falls off the bed, hanging like a dead leaf from a branch. The Cardinal lifts it and holds it for a moment; it lies limp in his hands, without returning the grip. His throat and chest start to ache.

He sets it back where it was, and frees his fingers of their load of rings. He bends, hovering a naked hand over Rochefort's knitted brow, letting his fingers warm up in the radiance of body heat his fevered skin exhales. He wrings out a piece of cloth in the washbasin, and lays it gently across the man's forehead. Rochefort makes no move or sound.

The Cardinal bends again, nudging the cloth to test the temperature with his lips, feeling them tingle with heat under the ephemeral relief of cold water. Only proof that he still lives, Rochefort's weak exhales puff like searing gusts of steam down his chin and neck. He can't bring himself to sit up again.

His Captain smells of sweat and herbal ointments. He smells of dried blood, of risks too readily taken. Of overheated skin and death avoided once too many. The Cardinal's hand finds the small braid in Rochefort's hair, still bound with a thin leather string. He tugs on it, and the braid comes loose easily, springing free from its constraint as if it contained all of Rochefort's rebellious nature. Richelieu smooths delicately through the wavy imprints it leaves behind, altering the texture of his hair like dents in a breastplate. With the way he's leaning on him, his concealed blade rests on the bare skin of Rochefort's chest, on the left. He smells of weaknesses, left behind like tracks of blood, leading the wolves to his throat.

The burn from his lips travels up his nose, to the corners of his eyes. He allows it. No one's looking. He slides his left hand down Rochefort's arm until he finds his hand, gripping it tightly. It grips back, barely, maybe just a reflex. He hides into Rochefort's shoulder and the air fights its way out of his tight chest, stuttering out in halted sobs he dares not to let out in full. No one's looking. No one will hear the uttered curses gracing his holy lips, not even God.

No one, he tells himself.

He feels it like a sudden shift in the air, a chill, like the feeling of eyes burning holes into his skull. In his pained reverie, the shadow of a knifed hand on the wall has the surreal ghostliness of a dream.

He whips around, choking on a scream, he scrambles for the dagger in his sleeve, knowing somewhere in his mind that he won't make it, because the blade is already high up and ready to strike, glinting in the waning light. No prayer comes to mind.

As if summoned, Rochefort's hand tears from his grip and grabs him around the waist, hauling him back between the wall and his own body, knocking all air from his lungs. The attacker's knife barely grazes his flailing arm, and Richelieu's dagger flies from Rochefort's free hand, landing square between the assassin's eyes.

Richelieu hears his Captain breathe out. He attempts to do the same, back aching from the blow he took. He sees the steadying crutch of adrenaline wane from Rochefort's body; moving with the careful slowness of the injured, he leans down into the bed again, before his arms can give out. For a moment they lie together, silent and short of breath.

Richelieu releases the back of Rochefort's nightshirt, that he had bunched up in his hands without realising. Propping himself up on his left elbow to see over the edge of the bed, the Cardinal recognises the young Guard who was sent to inform him of Rochefort's condition. Dead without a sound, without a drop of blood spilled. He doesn't allow his mind to touch on how stupid he's been, letting his guard down without the certainty of being alone, how _sentimental_. How weak.

"You were awake?" he asks instead, when he can trust his voice to come out steady.

"Barely," Rochefort murmurs in answer. His voice is rough and very faint, almost inaudible. With great effort, he rolls over to face him. Richelieu cringes at his helpless groans, imagining moving around on cracked ribs. "It was the Baron."

"What?" he manages to ask instead of bursting into tears anew.

"The Baron, planning Your Eminence's death. He didn't take your refusal as kindly as we hoped, I gather."

The Baron. As events from months before come back at him, the Cardinal is startled into a laugh, incredulous. "Do the laymen claim blood over refused Indulgences now?"

"So it seems." Something glints warmly in Rochefort's open, fever-bright eye. "I took the liberty of seizing his correspondence, and have the Baron _brought to justice_." He smiles in irony, giving a small cough and sucking in a breath through his teeth, brow knitting in pain. "This before I was discovered, of course."

The Cardinal bites his lips, unsteady fingers tucking back in the loose hem of a bandage, lingering on Rochefort's arm in need of something else to do; he pulls the sheets back up, and adjusts them.

Smiles look strange on Rochefort's bare face. Years with the edge of his eyepatch cutting into the pull of his cheek and brow made his smiles a bit lopsided; without the eyepatch, the smile remains angled without reason, like a misplaced comma written out of habit.

"How many were they?" Richelieu asks lightly around his constricting throat.

"Not as many as my pride wishes," his Captain answers easily. He nods at the dead man on the floor, "This one was the last ditch. You can rest now." His eye is drifting closed, like he can't stay awake anymore. Still, he catches Richelieu's hand tracing down his arm, and grips it gently. "Your eyes are red."

Sometimes the Cardinal is sure that Hell sent him this tempting fiend, with his eye of burnt gold and his undying fealty, and the Devil himself is laughing and watching him fall lower and lower. He swallows.

"See that you live through the night, instead," he says back, clutching his hand as if he wanted his callouses to imprint in his own. Rochefort chuckles softly.

"Rest assured, they don't want me down there," he murmurs apologetically, drifting off. The smallest tug is enough for Richelieu to understand, and he lifts their joined hands to Rochefort's lips. He feels them move against his knuckles, breathing out, "... not even down there."

He listens to his breathing, still so faint, but already a bit stronger than before, steady as he melts into sleep. He brings his lips to his Captain's brow, checking his temperature again, making sure that the fever broke.

Once there, he can't move away, aware of the dead man witness to the pouring out of his relief, of his sentiment. But dead men can't talk, so he signs Rochefort's face, kissing his forehead, both eyes, his dry lips.

He wishes it weren't blasphemy, that it were enough to keep him safe; as, if Hell doesn't want him, he'd be glad to keep him there, exactly where he's wanted.


End file.
